Are you one of the many B2B companies struggling with your engagement, and, more importantly, your results from your Facebook marketing strategy?
Likes are great, but you need leads. Social media can produce impressive results, but not overnight. It’s all about connecting with your audience, having an open communication, and building trust over time.
Understand Your Audience, Then Target Them
We say this one a lot, but that’s only because it’s absolutely crucial. The single most important component in any marketing campaign is knowing who it is you’re marketing to. Without that knowledge, you’ll waste a lot of time and a lot of energy hoping for a home run, but wondering why your efforts are not connecting. Know who your ideal customers are and what they’re looking for.
Your audience on Facebook may be different than your audience on Twitter. Refer to your existing buyer personas – which ones are active on Facebook and what kind of content resonates and drives them.
Additionally, Facebook Insights allows you unprecedented access to detailed information about your audience, including demographics, geographical area, and when your fans are online. By measuring reach and engagement, you can also see which of your posts connected with your audience. This helps make successes repeatable – see what you’re doing right and keep doing it. See what could have been done better, and adjust.
Actually knowing your audience is the first step in any successful social media marketing strategy. This knowledge guides every decision in your campaigns, which leads us to…
Share Content Tailored Specifically for Your Audience
Regularly publish content that is valuable to your target audience. This can be educational or entertaining – it just has to be engaging.
But don’t limit yourself to your own original content – you’ll never be able to publish as regularly as you should. Follow the 80/20 rule: 80% curated content and 20% original. Just keep your curated content inline with information your audience finds interesting and relevant. If your company is an auto parts manufacturer, you could share a blog post about technological innovations in automotive engineering.
Make sure your content is brief, clear and direct. And most of all, make it relevant. Relevant posts get shared. Shared posts increase your reach.
Avoid the “Hard Sell”
Don’t bombard your audience with calls-to-action (CTAs). Keep things “social” – that’s why they’re here, and that’s why you should be here.
I get it: you want results. That’s why you’re engaged in all this social networking. Likes won’t turn into leads immediately, and it won’t happen at all if they’re feeling a constant pressure to convert.
Take your audience on a journey with your brand over time. They’ll learn to trust you, they’ll keep coming back for more content, you’ll build loyalty, and those leads will start coming soon enough.
Interact with Your Audience
Your Facebook page is a two-way street, so it should be utilized as such. Don’t just churn out content – engage with your audience. Respond to posts, answer questions, and let your fans know that you’re available for them. Take polls, ask questions – get them involved. Learn more information about what interests and drives them.
Incorporate Retargeting and Pay-Per-Click
Some businesses use Pay-Per-Click as the singular strategy in their marketing campaigns, which often leads to dependable, yet less-than-ideal results. When used as one component in a comprehensive social marketing campaign, however, PPC can prove very effective.
Only 2% of website traffic converts on the first visit. Retargeting allows you to show highly-targeted PPC ads that are designed specifically for those users that have already visited your site. This gives you another chance to share your best content and to promote specific content based on the audience you want.
Post Videos, Often
Posting photos used to be the best way to reach Facebook fans – and they’re still the most promoted types of posts – but the most successful posts for reaching your audience is through video.
Remember 2014’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge – an explosive piece of viral video marketing that took social media by storm. How many videos of people – friends, family, celebrities, absolute strangers – dumping ice water over their heads did you watch? And you weren’t only entertained, but you were inspired by the cause and wanted to participate in the action.
Facebook now gets about 3 billion video views a day. For sponsored posts, Facebook no longer lets you include a Youtube link, so the best way to reach your audience is to upload your original video content directly to Facebook.
Facebook’s silent autoplay function for their native video is a major key to its success. In their newsfeed, fans see your video content already in motion, and if it’s interesting and engaging enough, they’re going to want to hear it and watch the rest of it, too. You’re able to reach substantially more people compared to uploading a Youtube link that the user has to click to initialize.
Keep Publishing
Everything we just talked about? Keep it up. You’ll always be striving to deliver high-quality, high-quantity content, but don’t get so hung up on quality that you fail to regularly update your page. Aim for at least a couple of updates every week.
Use your buyer personas and Facebook Insights as guides. Publish updates on your audience’s schedule, publish content that they’ll find valuable and shareable, and keep your page active and up-to-date.
Remember, keep it social, keep it brief, and always direct your fans back to your website for more information. That’s how you’ll pull your fans further through your sales funnel. That’s how you’ll turn a mere ‘like’ into a qualified lead.
